Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that his right-wing Likud party risks losing the upcoming parliamentary elections.
“Our security is at great risk because there is a real danger that we could lose this election,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper on Thursday.
The Israeli premier further warned that a potential loss by his party in the polls, due on 17 March, would translate into a change in the Zionist regime’s policy with regard to Iran and Palestine.
The remarks came two days after an opinion poll by Israeli research institute, Panel Politics, showed that the Zionist Union – an alliance of Labor party, led by Isaac Herzog, and Hatnua party, led by former foreign minisiter Tzipi Livni – could earn 24 seats against Likud’s 21 projected seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).
“If the gap between the Likud and Labor continues to grow, a week from now Herzog and Livni will become the prime ministers of Israel in rotation, with the backing of the Arab parties. That will cause such a monumental shift in policy that it is a danger,” Netanyahu said.Click here for the full storyFrom Russia Today

Iceland announces dropping bid to join EU

Published time: March 12, 2015 19:12
Iceland has dropped its bid to join the European Union, the Foreign Ministry in Reykjavik says. The announcement follows pledges made by the country’s euro-skeptic government since winning the 2013 election.

Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, the Icelandic foreign minister, said in a statement that he had informed Latvia, the current EU president, and the European Commission that his center-right government had decided to withdraw its application, which was submitted six years ago.
“The EU and Iceland have discussed the country’s position on the status of its bid to join the European Union,” the statement reads. “The government does not intend to resume preparing for EU membership.”
Prime Minister Sigmundur Davið Gunnlaugsson talked of formally withdrawing the bid in January.Click here for the full storyFrom The Times of Israel

Syria’s Assad tightens grip after four years of war

Defying expectations, regime holds on to power as the West focuses on the Islamic State threat

BY SAMMY KETZ March 12, 2015, 7:05 am
Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks to the BBC in an interview aired February 10, 2015. (screen capture: BBC)

AFP — Despite Western and Arab hopes he would be consigned to the dustbin of history, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad enters his fifth year of war with an increasingly tight hold on power.
Alarm over the sweeping expansion of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in Syria and Iraq means that international priorities have shifted away from Assad’s removal.

“Assad has improved his position internationally. The US, EU states and others are no longer demanding his immediate departure,” said Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
In the four years since the conflict erupted in March 2011, leaving more than 210,000 people dead, Assad’s forces have succeeded in halting gains by Western-backed rebels and jihadists seeking his overthrow.
While rights groups still regularly accuse Assad of indiscriminately killing his own people, sending helicopters to drop crude barrel bombs, even the Syrian opposition no longer demands his resignation as a precondition for peace talks.Click here for the full storyFrom Russia Today

Plunge into darkness: 83% of Syrian electricity wiped out

Published time: March 13, 2015 04:06
The toll from the four-year civil war in Syria is clearly visible even from space, with satellite images revealing that 83 percent of the lights have gone out in the country since 2011.

The satellite data – which compares Syria’s night landscape in 2011 to that of 2014, from 800 kilometers above earth – reflects a grim picture of the situation on the ground in Syria, according to researchers from China’s Wuhan University.“These satellite images help us understand the suffering and fear experienced by ordinary Syrians as their country is destroyed around them,”the lead researcher on the project, Dr. Xi Li, said in a statement.Click here for the full storyFrom the Jewish Daily Forward

Published March 12, 2015.
(JTA) — Against a soundtrack of dramatic music, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lists his government’s security accomplishments, declaring over the shouts of opposition lawmakers that his Likud Party has stopped terrorists, stood up to Iran and secured Israel’s borders.
Released Wednesday, the video is the latest in a string of Likud campaign ads to hammer home a single message: When it comes to Israel’s security, no leader is as trustworthy as Netanyahu.
Israelis apparently agree. Polls show that on the defense issue, Israelis trust the prime minister more than his chief opponent, Isaac Herzog of the center-left Zionist Union.Click here for the full storyFrom the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Ex-leader of Russian Jews says Ukrainian oligarch should be hung

March 12, 2015 5:03pm
(JTA) — A former leader of Russian Jews said he would like to hang prominent Ukrainian Jews “until they stop breathing.”
Yevgeny Satanovsky, who served as a president of the Russian Jewish Congress in the years 2004 and 2005, made the assertion on March 9 about Joseph Zissels, leader of the Vaad Association of Jewish Communities and Organizations of Ukraine, and Igor Kolomoisky, a Jewish billionaire who is the governor of the district of Dnepropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
During a radio interview for the Govorit Moskva station, Satanovsky, who currently heads the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, said he would like to kill both men because he said they maintain that Stephan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who during World War II collaborated with the Nazis and later fought against them, is not responsible for the death of Jews murdered by men under his command.
“A significant number of Ukrainian officials, he said, “out of cowardice, stupidity, or from general meanness says that ‘Bandera didn’t kill any Jews.’ On this, allow me to reiterate: When and if there’s way to do this, then I will hang Kolomoisky and Joseph Zissels at least in Dnepropetrovsk in front of the Golden Rose Synagogue until they stop breathing.”Click here for the full storyFrom the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Report praises Israel’s effort to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza

March 12, 2015 1:05pm
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel’s military went far beyond its legal obligation last summer during its Gaza operation to prevent civilian casualties, according to report by a panel of former senior U.S. military officials and legal experts.
The Gaza Conflict Task Force report, which was released Wednesday, was commissioned by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, or JINSA.
The task force called the conflict “Hybrid Warfare: where non-state actors equipped with advanced weapons operate in densely populated urban areas, disregarding the safety of civilians and capitalizing on its enemy’s efforts to comply with the law.”
The report praised the Israel Defense Forces for its effort to limit civilian casualties, such as alerting residents in a targeted area through phone calls, leaflets and low impact explosives, but also emphasized that the United States and Israel should study the conflict in order to find a balance between mitigating civilian casualties and achieving mission objectives.Click here for the full storyFrom the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Why Israelis will vote on the economy, not security

By Ben SalesMarch 11, 2015 11:44am
In a sign that Israelis are more focused on economic issues than security ones during the elections, protesters demonstrate against mass layoffs at Israel Chemicals Ltd., in a rally outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, March 11, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Last summer, Israel endured its longest war in decades and saw missiles fall across the country. A string of terror attacks followed in Jerusalem. A year ago, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed again. Meanwhile, there’s increased unrest on Israel’s northeast border, and world powers are negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program.
So in next week’s election, national security is the top issue, right? Wrong. A poll last weekshowed that, when they vote on Tuesday, most Israelis will think first about Israel’s high cost of living. Security comes in second.
It’s not that war and peace aren’t important to Israelis. They just don’t think the elections will make much difference. A February poll by the Israel Democracy Institute shows that Israelis don’t hold their government responsible for the impasse with the Palestinians or the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.
According to the poll, more than two-thirds of Israelis think Israel depends on the United States regarding defense, foreign policy and economics. But only about a quarter of Israelis hold the Netanyahu government primarily responsible for the deterioration in relations with the White House, and only 43 percent said the U.S. administration would be friendlier to a center-left government.Click here for the full storyFrom Ynet News

EU foreign policy chief supports task force on anti-Semitism

ADL praises Federica Mogherini and leading Italian parliamentarians for taking action to ‘help Europe’s Jews to truly feel more secure.’
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has expressed support for the creation of a European Union task force on anti-Semitism.
Mogherini, vice president of the European Commission and High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, announced her support in a statement published in Italian newspaper La Repubblica and indicated that she had sent a proposal to Frans Timmerman, the European Commissioner whose portfolio includes human rights and non-discrimination.
Mogherini’s support was welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “The terror attacks against a kosher store in Paris and the Copenhagen synagogue and the widespread anti-Semitic attacks last summer demand a high-level response, and that response must encompass the entire EU,” said ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman.Click here for the full storyFrom The Times of Israel

BY JTA March 12, 2015, 4:37 amFrench Prime Minister Manuel Valls delivers a speech during a session of questions to the government, on February 11, 2015 at the National Assembly in Paris. (photo credit: AFP/PATRICK KOVARIK)

France’s national watchdog on broadcasters reprimanded a journalist who asked a politician whether the country’s prime minister was “under Jewish influence.”
The Superior Audiovisual Council, or CSA, criticized a presenter for the BFMTV television station and the RMC radio broadcaster, over an interview he conducted last month with ex-French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, the Le Figaro daily reported Sunday.

During the Feb. 16 interview, Dumas said of Prime Minister Manuel Valls, “He has personal alliances, everyone knows he is married to someone – a distinguished person – who has influence over him.”
Following up on Dumas’ statement, Jean-Jacques Bourdin asked Dumas, “Is Valls under Jewish influence?” Dumas replied, “Probably, I would think so.”
Valls, who many Jews hold in high esteem for his strong-worded rejections of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and prosecution of inciters of hate, is married to Jewish violinist Anne Garvoin. In 2011 he said during a public appearance that his marriage connected him “in an eternal way” to Israel and the Jewish people.
The council said that Bourdin’s question “served to banalize and advertise discriminatory behaviors,” Le Figaro reported. It put BFMTV, RMC and Bourdin on notice, but did not impose any fines.Click here for the full storyFrom The Times of Israel

The prayers of Orthodox Jews in search of vibrators, intimate lube and silk handcuffs have been answered. An Israeli rabbi is now selling sex toys over the Internet—and he says it’s totally kosher.
Natan Alexander, an Australian-born rabbi living in Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, launched Better2gether four months ago in a bid to strengthen and enhance couples’ love lives. With no nude photos or vulgar language on the site, he says it is appropriate for not only modesty-conscious Orthodox Jews, but also for other conservative people turned off by typical websites selling sexual aids.

“I’ve been told that people really need something like this,” Alexander, a Jewish educator, told The Times of Israel.
Alexander, a 34-year-old married father of four, says there are two types of people he is trying to serve with his new business.
“The first are couples with specific issues in their sex life, such as the husband’s premature ejaculation or the wife’s never having had an orgasm,” he said.Click here for the full storyFrom the Jewish Daily Forward

Published March 12, 2015.
Two developments this week bode ominously for Jewish Republicans.
First, Republican primary voters can’t stand Jeb Bush and Chris Christie. In a new poll by theWall Street Journal, Bush had roughly equivalent negatives to Hillary Clinton. 42% of Republican voters said they couldn’t see themselves supporting him. 57% said the same of Christie.
The top vote-getters were Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Mike Huckabee. To be sure, all of them love Israel, in their way; Huckabee may even believe it will play a part in the Second Coming of Christ. But they have also expressed support for placing crosses on public land, returning prayer to public schools, and laws that even their backers admit would allow discrimination against Jews.Click here for the full story